UK Campaigns to Stop Forced Marriages

Times of India

August 12, 2013

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LONDON: The UK government on Saturday issued a warning to teachers, doctors and airport staff asking them to look out for Asian families going back to their native country for the summer holidays with their daughters as they usually use the holidays to force their daughters into marriage during the trip.

Forced marriages — a common phenomenon among South Asian families in Britain have now become a criminal offence. Britain's monarch Queen Elizabeth II has got the government to introduce a new legislation to criminalize forced marriage under which parents found coaxing their children into wedlock may get a prison term.

Britain's home secretary Theresa May has said the government has now strengthened the protection for victims of forced marriage by making it a criminal offence.

The summer marks a peak in reports of forced marriage cases, when youngsters can be taken on 'holiday', unaware of the real purpose of the trip. Between June and August last year, the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), a joint operation by the home office and the foreign and commonwealth office, received over 400 reports.

This year the unit is handing out "Marriage: it's your choice" cards, to inform potential victims, to speak to police or airline staff if they find themselves at an airport with nowhere to turn.

Crime prevention minister Jeremy Browne said, "The rise in forced marriage reports over the school holidays is shocking. Teenagers expecting their GCSE or A-level results should be embarking on a bright future, not condemned to a marriage with someone they have never met and do not want to marry. This is a serious abuse of human rights and that is why we are legislating to make it illegal."

Foreign office minister Mark Simmonds said, "The school summer holidays are the time when young people are at the highest risk of being taken overseas for a forced marriage."

The FMU, earlier this year, had revealed that it helped in 1,485 cases of possible forced marriage in 2012 involving 60 countries across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America.

The statistics for last year show that of the 744 cases where the age was known, more than 600 involved people under the age of 26. In 2008, over 1,600 incidents of suspected forced marriages were reported to the FMU.